By Savannah Carr and Jonah Hinebaugh
Readers of R.L. Stine might think his job is to scare children.
He is renowned for his young adult-oriented “Goosebumps” series, which was adapted for television in 1995. Even his Twitter bio reads “My job: to terrify kids.”
But Stine is more than just the bestseller of children’s horror.
Until his 40s, he wrote comedy pieces under the name Jovial Bob Stine.
At 9, he stumbled upon an old typewriter on which he wrote comedic stories and jokes. Stine continued on his comedic path through college, where he wrote and was an editor for Ohio State University’s humor magazine, The Sundial.
In college, Stine was not sure if he wanted to major in English or journalism.
“In those days, every college had a humor magazine… That’s all I did in college. And this guy came in who became a famous folk singer, his name was Phil Ochs,” Stine said. “At the time, he was at Ohio State, and he told me ‘Don’t go into journalism, it is a drag.’”
After graduating from college, Stine moved to New York and, eventually, began working at Scholastic Corporation. In addition to publishing dozens of joke books and articles, he created a humor magazine called Bananas.
Stine wrote for Bananas until a friend suggested he write a horror story for teens called “Blind Date.”
“It’s embarrassing because it was not my idea,” he said. “But at that point, I never said no, so I said yes. So I ran to the bookstore, found out what people were writing and bought a bunch of teen horror to know what to do.
“I wrote the book and it was a bestseller.”
From there, Stine’s horror novel career began. He started with a series for teens called “Fear Street.” The series grew quickly, but eventually he wrote the first book of the “Goosebumps” series: “Welcome to the Dead House.”
“Goosebumps” took off, and at his height, Stine was writing a new installment every month.
Despite the success of the series, Stine was originally reluctant to write “Goosebumps.”
“I didn’t want to do ‘Goosebumps,’” he said. “I was doing ‘Fear Street’ for teens and it was really popular. I was really afraid that doing the younger series would screw up ‘Fear Street.’”
For most of the “Goosebumps” books, Stine started out with only a title around which he based his story.
“I don’t really try to think of ideas, I just think of titles,” he said. “I’m sort of the opposite of most authors. I start with the title always; most authors get an idea they write, then maybe later they come up with the title.”
One example Stine recalled was for his book “Little Shop of Hamsters.”
“So I’m walking my dog in the park, and these words popped into my head: ‘A little shop of hamster.’ Great title, right?” He said. “So then I started thinking, ‘Well, how do you make a hamster scary? What if there are thousands, or what if there’s a giant one or whatever.’ And that’s how I get ideas.”
Stine then takes his title and ideas and begins to outline his chapters before he starts writing. He says this is how he manages to avoid writer’s block.
“I do an incredible amount of planning before I write. I do a chapter-by-chapter outline for every book,” Stine said. “So when I sit down to do the actual writing, I know everything that’s going to happen in the book before I start to write it.”
But even Stine struggles with writing from time to time.
“There are days where it feels like I’m writing uphill. It’s like a struggle,” he said. “But I just keep going because I know I’ll go back and fix it. Just keep writing and go back on a better day.”
Despite the challenges, Stine says his work as a writer rarely feels like work.
“For me, it’s like fun,” he said. “I work from 10 (a.m.) to 2:30 (p.m.). Yeah, those are pretty good hours, right? I don’t have to wear any special shoes.”
Stine, now 76, has no plans of stopping anytime soon; he says he still writes 2,000 words every day. His latest project is a collection of books based on the “Garbage Pail Kids” — a trading card parody of “Cabbage Patch Kids.”
While he’s writing, Stine surrounds himself with oddities. His office decor includes a Slappy dummy, a 3-foot cockroach, a dummy of himself and movie posters from the “Goosebumps” movies.
Stine spoke at the Tampa Bay Times Festival of Reading on Nov. 9. Before the festival began, he met with children for an interview, where he explained why each “Goosebumps” story has a boy and a girl for the main characters.
“‘Goosebumps’ isn’t a boy’s series, nor is it a girl’s series,” he said. “I want both to read it.”
